Document Life Cycle
Banks and credit unions rely on a variety of documents to support commercial lending, new account creation, vendor management, compliance, and other front-office and back-office use cases. The term “document life cycle” refers to a collection of phases that a document goes through during its useful life at the financial institution.
Phases in the Document Life Cycle
Although document management practices vary among financial institutions, most document-related activities fit into one of the following life cycle phases:
Document Creation, such as when a loan presentation or purchase order is generated internally by the financial institution. Documents originating from third parties are also common, including those provided by customers or members, insurance agencies, title and appraisal companies, vehicle dealerships, service providers, accounting firms, and other entities.
Ingestion & Categorization of a document into the financial institution’s ECM (enterprise content management) or similar recordkeeping system. Depending on the technology, document ingestion may occur via desktop scanning, batch scanning, drag and drop, or API. Capturing and storing document metadata simplifies decisions about categorization, retention, and access. Manually keying in metadata is one approach, although advancements in OCR (optical character recognition) and AI (artificial intelligence) are transforming how financial institutions collect, organize, and utilize document-specific information.
Enabling Convenient & Secure Access for permissioned employees and, in some cases, for account holders (via self-service banking channels). For internal use cases, simply “sharing access” is only one part of the equation. Allowing employees to quickly search for, locate, and use information is key for enabling efficiency.
Updating Documentation, such as when an account holder’s driver’s license expires, prompting the financial institution to collect a new version.
Purging Documents and Related Information in accordance with the financial institution’s document retention policy. For paper-based systems, this likely involves shredding documents. By contrast, electronic records and associated metadata are deleted from ECMs.
Additional Content Management Resources
Continue learning about information life cycle management. Alogent offers several related resources for bankers, including:
- Blog: Enhancing Document and Information Management in Banking
- PDF: Information Life Cycle Management: Meaningful Process Automation
- Video: Elevate Your Content Management Experience
Contact Alogent to schedule a free demo of our suite of ECM solutions.
